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Rolls-Royce Wraith Drophead Coupe spied

Soft-top version of Rolls Royce Wraith coupe caught testing for the first time, likely to cost in excess of £250,000

Rolls-Royce is preparing a new Wraith Drophead Coupe to become the second cabriolet in its range. A soft-top version of the Wraith coupe, the Wraith Drophead is a logical extension of the Rolls-Royce family, but isn’t expected to appear until late 2015, with a likely debut at the Dubai Motor Show in November 2015.

The Wraith Drophead’s styling closely follows the template set by the larger Phantom Drophead Coupe, which costs £305,000. The Wraith coupe’s rakish fastback hardtop makes way for an upright canvas roof, while the Phantom Drophead’s teak panelling on the rear deck could be reprised for the smaller Wraith.

It appears that the Wraith Drophead Coupe borrows the kinked, LED running light-equipped headlight clusters seen on the recently facelifted Ghost saloon. These more modern light units could be incorporated into the Wraith coupe as part of a facelift later in the model’s life-cycle.

Under the bonnet, the Wraith Drophead Coupe is likely to borrow the mighty powertrain from its fixed-head sister. The Wraith coupe is Rolls-Royce’s most potent model, thanks to a 6.6-litre, twin-turbo V12 engine that develops 624bhp.

Powering the rear wheels via an eight-speed automatic gearbox which can anticipate the need for gearchanges thanks by communicating with the car’s sat-nav, the Wraith coupe can hit 62mph in just 4.6sec, despite weighing in more than 2300kg.

The open Wraith Drophead coupe could potentially push that figure the wrong side of 2500kg, but with 800Nm on tap, it’s still likely to still be unfeasibly fast.

With no Mulsanne convertible in the Bentley range and the demise of Maybach, the Wraith Drophead Coupe will be something of a class of one when it arrives in 2015. The price is sure to outstrip its coupe stablemate at over £250,000.

Meanwhile, Rolls-Royce is also working on designs for a super-SUV to challenge the Bentley Falcon, and the eventual replacement for the Phantom flagship, according to its CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös.